Germans were already holding my legs

The soldiers of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Battalion were given their first combat mission in early 1943. Following a train trip from Buzuluk to Valujki and a 350 km-long exhausting march, they arrived in the community of Sokolovo on 1 March 1943 and were ordered to keep a defence position on the River Mža, in order to stop the possible progress of Nazi forces. First Lieutenant Otakar Jaroš’s first company took a forward defence position and a Nazi offensive came on 8 March 1943 – fourteen Nazi tanks attacked Sokolovo. The soldiers of the first company repelled several tank and infantry attacks and retained the defence position. Although battalion leader Ludvík Svoboda ordered to retreat, his order did not reach the first company. The second company, which included Nikolai Kubarič, received an order: “Our task was to go and help Jaroš. Now this is the end, I thought.” Led by its commander, First Lt. Jan Kudlič, Nikolai Kubarič’s company proceeded from the defence position near the community of Artyukhovka to attacking Sokolovo: “I didn’t know what to do. A dead friend here, more dead bodies over there and the commander just keeps on screaming: ‘Forward!’” Nikolai Kubarič eventually made it to the required position and saw Jaroš, injured, coming down from his observing point at the church tower and running into the street in front of the church: “A Nazi tracked vehicle went by, with machine guns and flame throwers on its sides. That very vehicle ran over Jaroš, I saw it happen.” Kubarič remembers the night after the battle and hearing Czechoslovak soldiers calling for help in the battlefield. “You cannot imagine what the Nazis did to them – they threw wounded soldiers into flames. They were not humans, those Nazis.” Not just Otakar Jaroš died – in addition to the aforementioned Czechoslovak soldiers, commander of the second company Jan Kudlič died as well. Other wounded soldiers were taken to Kharkov and when the Germans took the city they were shot. First Lt. Vladimír Janek’s third company also took part in the battle of Sokolovo. The result of the battle was rated as successful since the progress of the Nazi forces had been stopped. Even so, there was a threat of a siege after the Nazis had taken Kharkov, which is why the Czechoslovaks retreated on 15 March 1943.